Does she act sluggish and then sudden Burst of power ? If so replace all spark plugs & check for bad coil pack

 

seafoam and clean out the TB plate?

 

hey my 2008 TL has the same problems. It has only 23k miles. Is your MPG poor? Like 16/18?

 

Its probably just the summer....if you want it to feel like it does on a cold winters morning all the time run meth..

 

Yea my gas milage is even worse. I only get good gas milage on long highway trips.

 

Saw your post in the UCM thread. Have you had a chance to cut out the cowl for better cooling? Also, are you sure you are using gas that has NO ethanol?

 

curious what weight brand and weight of oil do you use? Also do you overfill ?

 

mobil one 5w-20 extended performance... but i change it every 4-5000 thousand miles. and its right in the middle of the dipstick.

 

i noticed something yesterday, with VSA turned off, on the highway i couldnt believe how strong third gear pulled in top end. Even then when i got off the highway she felt good. I remember a while back i hooked up some scanner called car_MD, not mine but something i borrowed from my aunt and it pulled a code where it showed that something wasnt right with the abs system. Could it have something to do with that maybe, cause technically when turning of vsa it obviously disables traction control which im sure its tied into the abs system aswell. That could be something messing with the ECU. Although my abs works perfectly, i tested it right after i saw that code.

 

I have been thinking about this for months too. The VSA cuts power when you have wheel spin and that feels similar to the power surge on the TLs, you may be on to something. This all has to do with the ECU and timing control, the knock, 02 and IAT sensor work together to communicate with the ECU to control propper performance. But when one or more of the sensors get worn or go bad, we lose power. Many times the engine light wont turn on for a worn IAT or knock sensor, only when they are bad or unplugged, the light will turn on. Doing any fuel induction service or seafoam would remove durt and carbon from the intake manifold, valves and pistons. That carbon burnoff clogs cats and foul 02 sensors, so doing a good thing by cleaning the fuel system and blasting off carbon from the engine can cause other issues. Dont cut corners and just attack the knock, your plugs should last much longer, unless they are fouled with carbon.

 

I have been wondering a bit with your VSA, as to how it would perform with it disabled.

 

Oh, I forgot to bring up the APP issue. Well since this problem seems to be directly related to temperature differences, I would leave the APP for last, just my opinion.

 

I replaced the APP a while back, turned to be a problem on its own but now that the heat is back im not sure if it was at all. The thing was when i did replace it the pedal responded better....

would you suggest changing the knock sensor as well, i will be installing the manifold gasket to reduce heat soak and since I'm more then half way there i could also replace the knock sensor. Its not to expensive either, its about 30 and change. The only thing is that I'm having a hard time believing that the knock sensor could malfunction without going bad completely.... which would throw a code.

 

Is there a way to tell if the cars catalytic converters are bad or going bad? If say a check engine light is not on how would someone be able to tell?
I have an 08 Type S 6mt that im trying to diagnose a slight surging during accelaration mainly felt in 2nd and 3rd gear. I have done a ton other stuff but wanted to make sure the cats were ok. Every once in a while I get a slight egg smell after flooring it.

James

 

ok what mods do you have....?

my low end sucks coz of the following reasons:
1> pnp manifold and runners
2> mdx spacer
3> precat deletes
4> stock exhaust
5> P2R spacer
6> stock throttle body
all my mods have moved the power curve up....i have incredible high end 3500+ rpm...but my low end sucks....which will open up the minute I install an jpip+exhaust and have my throttle body ported and polished and installed a bigger throttle body spacer.....

so yeah what mods do you have ?

 

I would surely replace the knock, since you are replacing the intake spacer any way. It will be much easier to get it out of the way at the same time.

 

PCD, V3 JPIPE which eliminates the third Cat as well. stock exhaust with mid muffler delete. When she is running right i have tons of torque, I just barley need to touch the gas pedal and she is going. That's how i want her to drive all the time. The Tl in general switches gears way to soon and when the torque is gone its just silly. It seems also that she doesn't want to downshift that easily for some reason, thats when the problem starts occurring but when not the she downshifts happily. Otherwise you really gotta force her by pressing hard on the pedal to downshift. That's obviously when driving in "D". Changing over to Redline Transmission Fluid helped a little in the area.

I also had the ATLP Base exhaust, sold it cause i couldn't take the drone and i felt i lost lots of low end torque.

 

would you or anybody else who wants to chime in, replace the knock sensor with an OEM one or maybe one from Autozone. The price is not a factor cause i can order one from acuraoemparts for almost the same money. But wondering if going with an aftermarket would be better.

 

I think I posted about this but I noticed the same thing. Turn VSA off, car pulls better and not just in the lower gears where normal VSA could affect it but in the upper gears as well. The surging goes away and it pulls cleanly. There's the normal power loss due to hot temps but not the 100hp loss that it's had every summer. I don't really know where to go from here though.

 

Im nowhere near as knowledgable as someone like "I Hate Cars" but regarding the knock sensor thing, you could easily try driving with the sensor disconnected and see how it drives. Im not sure what the car resorts to when that particular sensor is disconnected, but its very easy to disconnect takes two seconds as the connector is at the top of the motor just to the left of the intake manifold. Its a single wire and easy to get apart. Dont leave it disconnected indefinetaly obviously, just give the car one drive and see how it feels just for grins.

James

 

I think the best one to talk to on this subject is "Inaccurate". He's done extensive knock sensor research and monitoring. I honestly can't remember what the ECU does when it sees an open there. Some retard the timing to protect the engine "just in case" and some would be like driving with no knock with it plugged in. Either way unplugging it should get rid of the inconsistency part of the issue. Just make sure you have premium in there when you do it.

 

You see when i connected that CarMD scanner to see if it would show anything even though i didnt have any codes showing. It suprised me with a code " 83-01 " and the definition of it - ECM/PCM RELATION FAILURE. Apperently something with the ABS system, and i guess also VSA. I wonder if the culprit could lay in there somewhere.

 

What tells the car that the braking part of VSA needs to be activated?

I've heard that when you lose traction the VSA will active the brakes so you dont get tire slip. Now what if that "sensor" is overheating or throwing false readings for the brakes to be activated?

So when you turn off VSA it just ignores it, and you wont get a false reading.

 

Ok im more and more thinking that this is the culprit to my problem. Today i also drove with VSA off. What i did was put the key in the second position, turn off VSA and then turn on the car. After that regular driving was so much fun i couldnt belive it, i didnt have a reason to manual shift it at all. When driving slowly and then stepping on the gas to accelerate the shift was so quick with no hesitation. Pretty much like it should. RED Line ATF does help too . Since i have the code scanned it must have something to do with the traction control. Im gonna have acura take a look at what exactly the problem is with that code and hopefully that might do the trick.

 

Basically when there's wheel spin, the ECU backs off the throttle. If it's isolated to just one wheel it will back off the throttle and apply the brakes to the wheel that's spinning.

If the car slides sideways it will apply brakes to the appropriate wheel to help get it back under control.

What it feels like is happening is the ECU is randomly pulling the throttle back for no reason. However, if it were isolated to just one sensor I would think at some point over the years I would have felt the ABS kick in randomly when driving which I haven't.

I've noticed now that while the problem is worse when heat soaked, on a hot day with the engine barely warm, the problem is still there when the VSA is on but the car feels completely normal with it off. There has to be some kind of software glitch doing this. I wish I had a spare ECU to try.

Running race gas used to cure most of it but lately the problem seems to be different. I haven't heard it audibly ping in a very long time.

 

how much would a new ECU run anyways?

 

I've heard upwards of $900 from Acura but as always you can probably find it for 1/4 of that.

 

the one from J&R is like 1500....

 

Acura's estore show's me this. for my 07

CONTROL MODULE, ENGINE (REWRITABLE) - $641.96

 

Could take a look at the sensors and were there located, maybe they are getting to hot. Possibly the wires could have some chaffing done to them? I would also see if you cant somewhat relocate the ECU away from where it is, maybe that is in a hot spot.

If i had a wire diagram i could take a look at start from the ECU, and locate all the sensors. I have free time at work currently so.

ALso thanks IHC for the description of how the VSA does all that jazz. Wasnt to sure what was going on really, all i heard was the brakes kick in.

 

how do you reset the ECU?...

 

Boom.

https://acurazine.com/forums/showthr...=ECU+Resetting

 

Just curious, where is the ECU even located?

 

I believe its located in the passenger side foot-well.

https://acurazine.com/forums/showpos...25&postcount=7

 

thanks for your help

 

Yup no problem!

 

I never looked personally, but I thought the ECU was underneath the nav unit cluster. On the floor.

 

Somewhat is, but just back more.

 

according to the code i have, one of the respected memebers here thinks it could be a bad abs modulator. which could cause these kind of symtomps. As i stated before the car drives much better with the VSA turned off. Now to my question, there is a fuse for "VSA" under the hood which is 40 AMP. Would removing the fuse completely shut off the VSA and not cause any other trouble other then a check engine light. I would like to try driving it like that to see if there is any difference...

 

^pull the fuse and try it.